Cornwall Cinema Gazetteer

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LOSTWITHIEL

Grammer School

Operating in the late 1920s but never changed to sound this brief operation was housed at the Grammer School on Queen Street.  The operator was A E Hamblin, of Truro.

Gone but not forgotten:        Glyn

This very basic and short lived cinema situated at the bottom end of South Street, on a site where the Duchy Palace smelting houses once stood.  It was a conversion of an existing buildings with an auditorium running parallel to the road.  Opened 7th April 1937 by Mayor W T Bassett, the film was The Queen of Hearts, with 328 seats and was ran by Harry M Williams.  The screen was 10' by 7 1/2' with a 20' proscenium, and 15' deep stage.  The sound system was BTH,British Thomson Houston.  The projectors were Gaumont Kalee. Mr Williams ran a competition to find a name for the cinema, the first prize was a free admission to the cinema once a week for a year.  The joint winners both proposed Glyn (after the local valley). The interior colour scheme was blue, grey and yellow, with grey stage curtains with a blue vertical strip and a gold horizontal strip.  The single curtain opened left to right. Plans were first drawn up by Vyvyan Salisbury of Wadebridge, and suggest a site where the road level outside was substantially lower than the cinema.  The plans show a major set of steps to give access to the single storey structure.  The entrance was to be formed by a veranda and gave access to a very small foyer with the box above.  Mr Williams is known to have considered a number of sites for the cinema so this site was not pursued. Plans by HM Williams himself dated 4th January 1937 show the building as it was  built.  The building works were carried out by Prophet Brothers of St Austell.  A small block is built onto the right front corner of the building.  This is the foyer, which in part protruded into the auditorium and it is above this part of the foyer that the projection box is installed.  A staircase ran around the other two walls of the foyer to access the box. The BBC broadcast an episode of Any Questions  from the cinema on 9.3.1956.  By 1957 the cinema was closing on Wednesdays.  The cinema closed completely on 2nd April 1960 and was later converted into a flat by Mr Williams who eventually retired here with his wife.  The seats and projectors were moved to the Arts Centre, St Austell.   The site has recently been redeveloped for housing following Mr Williams death in 1994, and there is little evidence left of the original building.

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